Posted by Joe Galvin on Tue, Apr 27, 2010 @ 10:46 AM
When Salesforce.com (SFDC) announced its intention to acquire Jigsaw on April 21, 2010, it marked its entrance into the data services market. Jigsaw’s SaaS-based, crowdsourcing model of company/contact data collection and validation appears to be a logical extension of SFDC’s cloud computing infrastructure. What is unclear is if SFDC really wants to compete with the D&Bs, Hoovers and ZoomInfo’s of the world for this market or if this, like their other acquisitions, becomes the technology foundation for their next cloud-based application. Just as Korel turned into SFDC content and Groupswim became Chatter, does Jigsaw become SFDC Contact at some point in the future attempting to leverage the millions of contacts currently stored in SFDC by their multitude of clients? I struggle to believe that the SFDC sales force is going to make plan by selling Jigsaw as an add-on into their client base as they attempted with SFDC Content before making it free. Or that they will direct/distract their sales force into the complex marketing data buying centers where vendors like Harte-Hanks and Acxiom make a living.
Does this also ignite the dreams of all those App-Exchange vendors that they may be next? Does this signal SFDC’s intention to get serious about marketing automation? At DreamForce last November, many thought the “mystery cloud” that later revealed itself to be Chatter was going to be the announcement of an acquisition in the marketing automation platform (MAP) space, as had been rumored. SFDC’s marketing capabilities are notoriously lacking when compared to the functionality we see with MAPs like Eloqua, Marketo and Manticore Technology. Combining the data services capabilities of Jigsaw with an established MAP vendor would give their sales force a powerful 1-2 punch to sell add-on seats into marketing, leveraging their SFA infrastructure and growing their contact value.
The increasing volume of announced and soon-to-be-announced vendor acquisitions/mergers in the sales and marketing automation markets suggest that in anticipation of the next growth cycle, the vendor community is quickly adapting to user demand for value-added applications that drive performance and sales productivity, and that these are the requirements that will rise to the forefront of funded initiatives. With more than 88 percent of organizations having already deployed core sales force accounting (SFA) applications, it seems only logical that the next wave of user investment will be directed toward sales and marketing 2.0 applications — those that focus on selling, not just measuring sales.
For SFDC users this can only be viewed as good news. Jigsaw, like Content and Chatter, represents the first truly new functionality we’ve seen from SFDC, enabling it to move beyond being a sales force accounting tool and becoming the integrated sales and marketing suite that users are building for themselves today.
Posted by Jonathan Block on Mon, Apr 26, 2010 @ 11:08 AM
I'll start off saying by way of a disclaimer that this post will mainly be an advertisement for our upcoming Summit, May 12-14 in Phoenix, so feel free to hop off now if that rubs you the wrong way.
With that out of the way, I've heard a number of comments recently about the lack of B2B content at many marketing and social media conferences. This isn't too surprising as it's a lot easier to determine the value of a marketing program that is essentially a transaction rather than the months-long sales cycles that typifies a B2B deal. And when B2B marketers tag either the first or last interaction as the magic tactic, it's tough to get a clear picture of the optimal marketing mix.
Which brings us to our 2010 Summit. We've assembled a great cast of guest speakers that will share case studies and best practices on the ROI of optimizing marketing and sales through function alignment. Our guests are senior-level marketing and sales leaders, including:
- Maxine Graham - senior director, global integrated marketing and operations; Blue Coat Systems
- Peter Johnson - senior manager, marketing operations; Blue Coat Systems
- Heidi Melin - senior vice president and chief marketing officer; Polycom
- Andrew Miller - executive vice president, global field operations; Polycom
- Rene Saltzherr - senior director marketing, global demand marketing services; Oracle
- Doug Sechrist - vice president of demand marketing; Taleo
- David Shirk - executive vice president of global marketing; Siemens PLM Software
We hope to see you in Phoenix! If you can't make it, be sure to follow the conversation on Twitter by using the tag #sds10
Posted by Megan Heuer on Mon, Apr 19, 2010 @ 10:51 AM
One topic dominated conversations during my travels and on client calls the last several weeks: marketing tactic return-on-investment (ROI). This is hotly debated by analysts and consultants, not to mention pretty much anyone who has ever had to run or defend budget for a marketing program. Like any good question for the ages, the answer is “it depends,” but we can offer some clarity around what it depends upon and what can be measured.
Let’s start with the definition of a lead, because that’s where the ROI calculation trouble usually begins. For the record, we don’t believe every inquiry is a lead. It’s an inquiry, which means someone who has raised his or her hand to take some action you have made available. An inquiry can be anything from a newsletter sign up to a whitepaper download to an event registration and more. On its own, an inquiry does not signal readiness to buy, which means it is not a lead (yet). Our years of benchmark data show companies who treat every inquiry as if it is a lead and send it to sales do not perform as well as those who have a process to nurture contacts from inquiries until they are properly qualified and ready for sales. When marketing teams follow this pattern of sending every inquiry to sales, they reduce potential to deliver against goals in the most effective way possible, and by extension this reduces potential for sales to be more effective and efficient. Now in the rare case where an inquiry says “call me I’m looking to buy,” the qualification process is a lot shorter, but this type of inquiry is less common than, say, a whitepaper download. Case in point: this week alone I got two calls from companies after I completed forms to download whitepapers in which I clearly stated I was an industry analyst and not looking to buy. In both cases, a competent and polite sales rep called and asked me about my inquiry. If they had read the form, they would have known the call was a waste of time. Calls are not free, so sending an unqualified contact to sales also wasted money.
Based on this thinking, let’s tackle the tactic ROI question. Specifically, marketers want to attribute dollar return based on closed deals to a single tactic, when no single tactic deserves that much credit. If you know your sales cycle involves multiple touches from marketing before you can consider a lead qualified and ready for sales, then it is impossible to attribute revenue from a closed deal to any single tactic. Some systems are set up to attribute a first or last marketing touch to each lead that is passed to sales and that’s the tactic that gets credit for the close. This results in a flawed view of what really works because all you see is one touch, when in fact there may have been tens of touches over a long period of time that in combination supported qualification of a lead. It’s just not that simple in B2B, and trying to make it simpler can hurt marketers’ ability to allocate resources. Instead, take a more realistic and practical view of the role of tactics by monitoring cost per response (from new or existing contacts) and cost per contact added to the database. Next look at the appearance of those tactics in the buyer’s journey. First look at the number of touches it typically takes to qualify and what those are, then look at the touches present all the way from qualification to close. This will provide a more accurate view of the relative success of various tactics vs. their cost. The key is not to confuse tactic ROI with overall marketing ROI, because doing so sells them both short.
Posted by Jonathan Block on Fri, Apr 09, 2010 @ 09:18 AM
This is a post that should lead to a series of questions; questions you should be asking yourself if you have any responsibility for the social media strategy within your company. Whether you're executing on that strategy yourself, have staff to do it, or have outsourced to an agency, there is certainly no lack of social data you're receiving. The problem is that it's mostly quantitative about activity and gives you very little insight. Having thousands of followers on Twitter or fans on Facebook may make us feel good, but it's fairly meaningless if we don't know what the impact of these numbers are on the business.
While we've thankfully evolved away from the notions that social media in not measurable, the pendulum is in danger of swinging too far in the other direction. In other words, too many B2B marketers are being asked to show the direct impact that social media efforts are having on revenue. We continue to advocate that focusing too much on this direct impact goal is misguided; better to focus on the impact that social media is having on the seeding and creation of demand. Many organizations are doing this by tracking the change in response rates when social media is part of the tactic mix, but it's key to discover how it can raise conversion rates at other points in the demand creation waterfall.
And this leads to the questions. Are you using social media for activities beyond the top of the funnel, such as pipeline acceleration or sales enablement? Even if you're not applying social media to these initiatives, are you even tracking these types of activities regardless? Do you know your optimal tactical mix throughout the waterfall? Do you even have any impact beyond the handoff to sales? Without insight into what you do currently (as well as historically), it won't be possible to gauge the impact that social media marketing has on activities beyond the top (or even before the top) of the funnel.
If you're already asking these questions, you're on the path to gain the most insightful measurements of your social media marketing activities. And bonus points if you got the Pink Floyd reference in this post's title.
Posted by Jonathan Block on Fri, Apr 02, 2010 @ 08:28 AM
Based on our most recent research, developing an internal community is one of the fastest growing uses of social media, accounting for over 20 percent of B2B social media budget (program and personnel) in 2010. While the benefits of such an internal platform are often easy to identify (such as increased collaboration and knowledge sharing between sales, marketing, support and other functions), developing and maintaining a vibrant internal community for your organization involves not only a measure of serious forethought but also dedication to ensure the community continues to grow and evolve once the inevitable initial enthusiasm ebbs.
An often overlooked component is to clearly identify the goals of the community, as this will be important in determining needed roles, technologies and processes. Start with a pilot, using a smaller group to test features and validate approaches. Measurement is key to demonstrating the overall effectiveness of the internal community. While metrics such as time to value, quicker development of content and collateral, the emergence of new subject matter experts, and faster internal support and training time can be determined through a combination of included platform technology and employee surveying, organizations should also take a disciplined approach by individual function.
With the limitations of static content portals forming a major barrier to collaboration within an organization, the rise of an internal community continues to gain traction. One prevalent argument against such a community platform is that email is the most pervasive communications mechanism within the organization and should be adequate; however, email is not effective for those who aren’t part of a discussion chain nor is it easy to socialize and catalog emails for further use. While an internal community can provide a more effective platform for collaboration and best practices sharing between sales, marketing and the rest of the organization, well-socialized strategy and guidelines, as well as improvements to drive the continued health of the community, are the critical success factors.